1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates broadly to item sorting apparatus and to apparatus for diverting items out of the mainstream of items being sorted, holding and viewing an item permitting the data carried by said item to be corrected and/or altered or adjusted as required.
2. Prior Art
High speed item sorters such as, for example, those item/document sorters of the type for sorting checks have a requirement for being able to correct certain entries such as the courtesy amount, i.e. the amount written or printed designating the sum to be paid. Prior art apparatus provides electromechanical means such as finger-like members disposed at a selected area of the item stream or pathway at which position the item is abruptly halted in its flight while a pair of lifting elements vertically erect or project the item into a position such that the machine operator may view the amount to be corrected and enter the correct amount thereon. Thereafter, the document is lowered back down into the item path or guideway and is moved back into the mainstream of items being sorted.
In many such pieces of apparatus, if not most of them, the item to be corrected must be momentarily halted in its flight and/or removed from the stream of documents being handled by the apparatus. This necessitates a shutdown of the read/sort operation for whatever period of time it takes to make the correction or to direct the item to another position in the machine for correction at a later time. Another problem encountered with prior art apparatus is that of inability to view the entire document, for example, a check. The item is gripped by the means utilized to erect the item into view for the operator's perusal but a portion of the lower edge of the item is generally obscured from the operator's view by the very apparatus used in camming the document upwardly. This often blocks the view sufficiently so that part of the data which normally should be available to be read, such as the MICR encoding including the amount, the bank number, the routing, etc. is obscured, out of sight, and therefore this can lead to mistakes in handling of the document data.